The XM Competencies series helps you master the skills and actions to deliver amazing experiences.
Building a customer experience program that consistently delivers amazing experiences doesn’t just happen. It requires careful planning and design.
Thankfully, experience management (XM) is a discipline that can be learned and improved. The XM Operating Framework lays out skills and actions that help companies build a sustainable foundation for success.
In this series, we dive deep into the 20 skills to give you expert advice, insights, and actions to get you on your way to leading a powerful, data-driven XM program that better serves customers and your company.
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The Books
Leading XM
Flip through any history book. We generally tie every important moment or inflection point to one thing—a leader. The person with vision, skill, knowledge. The influencer able to get others on board. Someone with fortitude and focus to stay the course, even when priorities conflict or new challenges emerge.
Strong leaders define history for good reason. Those same qualities influence experience management (XM) today to improve the way we live, work, shop, and interact with the world.
That is why LEAD stands as the first competency in the XM Operating Framework, the organizational blueprint for mastering experience management.
Realizing XM
Ever been accused of “not seeing the forest for the trees”?
Most of us are guilty at some point, personally or professionally. Our attention focuses on solving one problem, improving a single number, or hitting a small goal—all without regard to a broader potential impact. It’s like walking through the woods at night, only seeing what the flashlight illuminates, unaware of the vast world just beyond that dim, narrow beam.
Organizations must REALIZE the measures that matter, making this second competency of the XM Operating Framework an important next step in the experience management blueprint.
Activating XM
Even when you see it coming, change is hard. And it’s difficult to navigate because our natural tendency is avoiding risk. Resistance often confronts even positive, common-sense adjustments.
Yet experience management (XM) is all about implementing strategic changes to meet business goals.
That is why ACTIVATE, the third competency in the XM Operating Framework, is so important. Mastering experience management means embracing change management. The two go hand in hand.
Enlightening XM
In a rush to act, teams often mistakenly use data to prove a point rather than create one. The confirmation bias leaves blind spots to the true culprits causing customer problems and the ways to stop them.
Successful CX initiatives ground the work in rich data. The information provides key insights necessary for solving business mysteries like churn rates, sales conversions, and financial performance.
ENLIGHTEN, the fourth competency in the XM Operating Framework, is about becoming a data detective.
Responding XM
We are more data-driven than at any time in history.
But data alone is actually pretty meaningless. The insights that come from that information are what matter, and even that is not enough to make an impact. Data only becomes valuable when insights inspire action.
RESPOND, the fifth competency in the XM Operating Framework, focuses on building systems throughout an organization that use data to drive change.
Disrupting XM
The only constant in life is change. Business survival depends on identifying and meeting the new needs of customers. Doing it before and better than anyone else? That is true disruption. Disrupt XM offers insights, business examples, and step-by-step processes to develop your company into a CX innovator.
DISRUPT includes three XM Skills for transforming customer experience opportunities into business realities: experience visioning, experience design, and experience integration.
